A Fortnight in Japan - Day 3 in Tokyo

One thing we knew we had to do in Tokyo was to visit the Tsukiji Market, where much of Tokyo (and other places in Japan) gets their sushi and sashimi fish. Because of the holidays that were going on during the time we were in Tokyo, the only day that the market was open during our stay was on Monday the 4th, so there was no doubt about our plans for that day! Brian already wrote a bit about it and described our big adventure there, when we stalked, uh... met Alton Brown and had a great sushi meal, so I'll just add a few more photos and descriptions.

Tsukiji is basically divided into the warehouse part, where things get offloaded from trucks, the wholesale market, where unimaginable amounts of fish and seafood get bought and sold every day, and the retail/restaurant part, where visitors like us stand in line for an hour to eat. The warehouse part is crazy busy, with little trucks and forklifts zipping around without much concern for dumb, awestruck camera-toting tourists. You really had to watch yourself, or this would be the last thing you'd see:

Vehicles rushing around Tsukiji Market

Lineups for all the sushi restaurants were really long the whole time we were there. The restaurant we went to had a relatively short line when we got there, but it also grew pretty long:

Brian being patient on the outside, seething with sushi-lust on the inside

And finally, the wholesale market was seemingly endless rows of stalls selling much of the same:

Terrific tuna

Fantastic fish

Awesome octopus

A little ways away from the fish market is a more general market where other types of food are served and sold, along with other things. While Brian was in line at the restaurant, I happened upon this scene, and I stood there gawking and taking pictures for a few minutes:

Big whole tunas on the ground

After the fish market, we walked around the outer markets a bit, and they were incredibly crowded. We got jostled and pushed, and once again I regretted being so short! Next, we walked to the Shiodome neighborhood, a modern business-y area filled with skyscrapers. We checked out the Advertising Design Museum of Tokyo, housed in the Caretta Shiodome building (it was ok, not too exciting but it did have some fun retro ads). In the same building, we took the elevator up to the 46th floor (which has a bunch of restaurants), and got some nice, free views of the city.

The three bluish low buildings in the middle of the photo are part of
Tsukiji Market

Next, we decided to visit Odaiba, a small island SE of the city that is served by a monorail. Sights, which include a manmade beachfront and souped-up boardwalk, are clustered around monorail stops. It all felt cute and contrived, which led me to keep calling it a "weekend leisure destination" even though many people work and live there.

First stop for us: Tokyo Big Sight, a big convention centre with a giant saw out front, and inverted pyramids in its design. When we got there, we were very curious as to why there were streams of girls and women coming out of it. A little further investigation revealed that there was a manga (Japanese comic) convention being held there, which apparently is very popular among females.

Tokyo Big Sight

On to a complex named Palette Town, next door to the Toyota Design Centre, where they have every Toyota model on display (and available for testdrives), most of which are not available in the US. They were demo'ing some of the robots they have developed to help people with disabilities (this seems to be quite a priority for their R&D department), but we couldn't take part since you needed an International Driver's License. Boooo!

Cutting-edge technology by Toyota, to help those who
aren't very mobile.

In the same complex was a huge arcade filled with lots of pachinko* machines and all sorts of arcade and simulation games, even large mechanical animals that you could ride around. We played a game of "double table tennis" which consisted of us running around in a big circle banging on buttons. Fun!

Stick a hundred yen coin in this guy and you could be in your very own rodeo.

Double Table Tennis... we definitely need one of these in our apartment

Further along the monorail line was the MeSci science museum, that looked neat but had a line that snaked around too many corners, so we passed. The Fuji TV building is a futuristic, grid-like building with a large ball floating in the middle of it. Think Rambaldi's Device from Alias (though disappointingly, it isn't red).

Fuji-TV building in Odaiba

Lastly, we walked through Deck's Beach, the fake beach and boardwalk that reminded me of Santa Monica pier, but with a huge shopping complex attached.

Back in Tokyo, we metroed over to Harajuku (yes, where Gwen Stefani got the idea). Right off of the station we hit Takeshita-dori, which was crazy-full of young adults hopped up on shopping fumes. Some of the girls were dressed up in the lolita costumes that were sold in many shops along the street, but mostly women were just really dressed up. Casual wear is definitely in the minority around Tokyo (my sensible shoes making my tourist status all the more painfully obvious!)

Elbow to elbow with Tokyo's youth culture

After we slogged our way through Takeshita-dori, we checked out Design Festa Gallery, an eclectic contemporary arthouse recommended by the Rough Guide. It was interesting, with every (small) room displaying a different artist's work, and some of the artists even being in the room with you. Cool, but not what I would normally think of as the Rough Guide's normal cup of tea.

The exterior of the Design Festa Gallery

As it started getting dark, we continued down Omotesando-dori, a street known for high-end stores and boutiques. Really in search of our next meal, we found Maisen, a restaurant that is famous for its katsu (katsu=fried breaded pork cutlet). The prices on the menu outside (which was all in Japanese) were a fair bit higher than your usual katsu-and-rice dish, but we didn't know why. Tired and hungry, we decided to follow the old, sometimes-true adage, "if it costs more it must be better" and head on in. Once seated, the english menu told us why things were a bit more expensive; they use Kurobuta, or "black" pork instead of regular old pork. At 3 times the price of the regular pork (and being deep fried, anyway), we weren't really game, so we just had regular tonkatsu-don, along with another set menu with several dishes. Yum!

Katsu-don with egg @ Maisen

I should note here that during our whole trip, meals were a highlight. Not only because we love food (and it was all good), but because it gave us a chance to rest our feet! We were going so hard all the time that sitting for a while, eating yummy food and gulping down ice water was really very enjoyable.

After our katsu dinner, we kept walking down Omotesando and came upon the beautiful Swiss-designed Prada building, all glass and steel diamonds:

Prada Building. So cool on on the outside,
who needs the 'stuff' inside?

We also checked out the gaudy Cartier building beside it, and a few others around.

Maki Fumihiko's Spiral building, on Aoyama-dori.
They sure like their cones here!

After that, it was time to head back to homebase for some zs with another terrific day in Tokyo under our belts.



*a difficult to grasp gambling/plinko/loud/flashy game that has the same kind of hold on people as slot machines. They are all over Tokyo, except since gambling is illegal, you win small silver balls instead of money. You can turn those balls in for 'prizes,' or go next door and collect money from a supposedly independent establishment, while everyone around pretends not to notice.

A Fortnight in Japan: Day 2 in Tokyo

Waking up on the second day was a little bizarre. It took me a minute to realize that I was lying on a futon mattress on the ground (which is common Japanese practice)... in an unfamiliar room... in Tokyo!! Once that set in, I was up and ready to go. Our days in Tokyo (for most of the trip, really), were jampacked, as we wanted to sightsee until our eyes hurt and eat until our bellies burst. (Note, we will soon have our complete photo albums up on our Picasa site - for now I'm including highlights, but there you'll get a play-by-play of, among other things, all the food we ate! Stay tuned...)

So for Day 2 we decided to chart a course that went through central Tokyo, beginning with the Roppongi area, through Akasaka, the Imperial Palace, Ginza, and ending up in Akihibara.

We arrived in Roppongi around 9:15am, which was really too early to see much. The main 'attraction' is Roppongi Hills, a huge, multi-structure complex of stores, housing, theaters, and restaurants. Coming from Canada, which has such a relatively small population, it is amazing to me that a city can support something as big as this (let alone several, as Roppongi Hills is just one of many such complexes around Tokyo). Anyway, it wasn't that interesting because everything was closed.

So, we moved on to the National Art Center, which is a beautiful building with a wavy green glass exterior designed by Kurokawa Kishi. It has no internal pillars, just two big inverted concrete cones. We didn't actually pay for any of the exhibits, but spent some time in and outside the building, and bought a curry bun from the cafe for breakfast.

The beautiful undulating exterior of the National Art Center of Tokyo

From there, we walked into Midtown, to the 21_21 Design Sight building, designed by the reknowned Ando Tadao. Two small, angular glass buildings rise up from (or descend into) the ground, housing temporary, single-theme exhibits. As far as we could tell, the exhibit had something to do with pottery, but we chose to move on to make sure we could catch all of the sights we had planned for the day.

Brian, checking out how he sizes up at 21_21 Design Site

In adjacent Hinokicho Kyoen (Kyoen/Gyoen/Koen/Goen = garden), there was some kind of group exercise/relaxation session, which lots of people stretching (and snoozing) on mats in unison to some guy's instructions. From here, we got a good view of Midtown Tower, the tallest building in Tokyo. It was your average skyscraper (we were meh about it, since it kind of pales in comparison to the Sears Tower (814 ft vs. 1450 ft!).

Next, we walked through the Akasaka neighborhood to see the Hie-jinja (jinja = shrine), scoping out locales for lunch along the way (and snacking on some super cheap sushi rolls from a tiny store.) The path up the hill leading to the jinja was supposed to be lined with red torii (torii = gate) but, to our disappointment, wasn't! The shrine itself is notable because it is the site of one of Tokyo's biggest festivals, the Sanno Matsuri, in June.

The big stone torii leading to Hie-jinja

After a stop for some udon noodles and a mysterious, dry powder-coated ball of red bean-stuffed mochi (my motto for the trip was "you never know until you try!" We later found out that this ubiquitous coating is dried soybean powder), we metroed up to Hibiya Station. The train spits you out at the corner of the Imperial Palace grounds, which is surrounded by a huge moat. In old times, the moat served the usual defensive duties, a protective, military function. Now, however, it brings an appreciated measure of peace to the city, an artificial river running through its center. The stone walls of the the Palace buildings rise somewhat imposingly above the moat and walls, with cool lookout towers peeking out.

A lookout tower at the Imperial Palace

You can't actually visit the Inner Palace grounds (unless you arrange for a tour that's in Japanese anyway), so we just walked around a bit. Families were picnicking in the grassy areas, but much of it was covered with gravel. Further to the NE is the Imperial Garden which was quite pretty, although we were in between cherry blossom (April) and iris (June) viewing seasons, so it wasn't as scenic as it could be.

Pretty Japanese maple leaves

From the Palace we headed East into Ginza, a busy area known for good (mostly expensive) shopping. Our first stop was the beautiful Tokyo International Forum, a steel and glass building that looks like a huge ship. Just lovely, all angles and light. There was a big Bach festival going on, so it was alive with a ton of activity.

The big glass hull-like ceiling of the Tokyo International Forum

We hit up the Tourist Info Centre nearby to see if they would make a reservation for us at a restaurant in Kyoto (they wouldn't), and got a bunch of pamphlets and info for things we wanted to do. It was oddly situated though, on the 10th floor of a random building near the Ginza train station. (General note - tourist info offices were a great help along the way, very friendly and chock full of useful maps, tips, and sometimes, even coupons. They are usually situated in or very close to the main train station in each city.)

We then went into the SONY building and looked at some gadgets (it's basically a showcase for current and upcoming technology). Back out on the street, there was some kind of demonstration going on. We heard its rumblings even when we were at the Palace, and saw lines of riot cops standing in formation at subway entrances. Too bad we had absolutely no idea what it was about!

Chuo-dori (dori = street) is the main shopping street in Ginza, with the usual high-end stores like Tiffany, Apple, Louis Vitton, and a bunch of Japanese department stores. It was a particularly pleasant stroll because they had closed the street to cars, providing some relief from the usual crowding on the sidewalks. It was still busy though:

Chuo-dori, in Ginza

I had a short list of stores to check out - a couple of fantastic stationery stores with handmade washi papers and cards, and a bakery. I also made sure that we visited the flagship branch of Muji, a store that I first encountered when I was in London in 2003 (now there are several branches in NYC). Back then, I remember that it sold stationery and some clothes, maybe a bit of furniture. This Muji, though, was so much more than that. All those things, plus bikes, gardening stuff, luggage, etc. And all of it was cool, nothing tacky. My kind of heaven!

Muji was right next to the Tokyo subway station, so we hopped back on the train and headed up for Akihibara, also known as "Electric Town." As the name suggests, this is an area where you can find all sorts of electronics, from MP3 players to phones to computers and accessories. We weren't in the market for anything which was good given that we had actually heard that prices weren't cheaper than in the US. (When I was in Hong Kong in 2004, we went to the equivalent area there and there were actually pretty good deals to be had.) It was a huge blur of neon and blinking lights, though, with sales people shouting from each store. (General note - sales staff are ALWAYS talking, shouting, hawking here... it would never fly in the US!) Akihibara is also known for "maid cafes," where girls dressed up in elaborate lolita/maid costumes *serve* you (we don't really know the details, never really bothered to find out!) Such maids were all over the street, handing out advertisements for the cafes and generally classing the place up.

A bad photo of some of the costumed folks we saw

Not looking for a specific gadget, our No. 1 mission was to find Jangara Ramen, a noodle house that I had seen on the appropriately named website, rameniac.com. We love ramen (I dearly miss Daikokuya, a terrific ramen restaurant in LA), and it was one of our primary missions to get some of the good stuff on the trip. Trying to find the restaurant was a huge endeavour, though, given the nonsensical arcaneness of Tokyo's address system. Addresses are a series of numbers identifying building , chome (area) , and block numbers in a given area, but not every map has these numbers identified, and the buildings themselves *might* have a teeny, dark plaque with its number on it. Argh. So, even armed with the address, I began to doubt that we would ever find my beloved ramen after we spent about 15 minutes scratching our heads and hesitantly walking around. My feet hurt, I'm getting a headache from all the beeping and yelling, gimme my ramen, dangit! I even had my phrasebook out and was ready to ask someone, but feeling a bit shy. Ramen Jangara wa doko deska?

So, Brian to the rescue. He carefully reread the section on addresses in our guidebook, and kept a keen eye out for building plaques. Suddenly we found a map stand that identified the block numbers, and, just when I was about to give up in frustration, we turned a corner and found it! Luckily, I had looked it up on the internet that morning and taken note of the store's blue and yellow logo, so I recognized it immediately. I was SO glad and so very proud of my very bright husband! After all that, we were rewarded with this:

Mmmmm, miso ramen with chashu pork, cod roe, bamboo shoots, and an egg

After filling up on tasty delicious noodles, we headed back out and decided that we just had to check out the "Taito" building, with its familiar space invaders-alien logo beckoning us in. Each floor of the 6 storey building had a different focus, the first floor comprising a ton of those grabby-crane games. The toys you could win ranged from the usual innocuous stuffed animal to PSP consoles, to some very sexy-looking barbie-like dolls... Rrrrrrrrowr. Another floor was filled with nothing but those sticker-photo booths! And of course, there were a couple of floors devoted to big, noisy arcade games. A vertical circus for the 21st century.

Taito game station, a multi-storey arcade in Akihibara

Tired, full, and overstimulated, we decided to hop back on the train and head home to Mina's. Once again, sleep came pretty easily, and after some planning for Day 3, we were snoring within minutes!

A Fortnight in Japan: Day 1 in Tokyo

It is hard to believe that we've been back in Chicago for exactly one week since we were in Japan. It feels like we are worlds away from the busy intersections we crossed, the hushed temples we explored, and the ramen shops where we slurped away.

Since we got back, I have been journalling and Brian has been annotating the hundreds (erm... thousands?) of photos we took. Each picture reminds me of the surreal, awesome sights, sounds and tastes we experienced, so different than anything else we know and any other country I've been to so far. We'll try to recount our experiences without running on and on, though every day we spent there could fill volumes! Let's begin...

After literally being up all night packing (and still feeling rushed and forgetting some things!), the taxi picked us up at our apartment at 4am. Still dark out, we spent most of the ride in silence, exhaustion and anticipation alternately filling my mind and rippling through my body. At the airport, we went through the motions of checking in and getting through security, and I got the rush of excitement that always hits me at the airport when I'm going somewhere or picking someone up. We're going to Japan!! A quick stopover in Dallas, and all of a sudden we were settled into our 12 hour flight to Narita. (When you fly to Tokyo, you use the NRT airport, which is about 60km NE of Tokyo). A few naps, one viewing of "Taken" (not really worth it) and a couple of compartmentalized meals including bad sushi later, we landed at NRT. We were told to stay put until the health officials had come onto the plane and screened us for swine flu. A few young Japanese men in plastic suits boarded the plane, one took a bunch of thermal images with a large camera, and we were soon cleared to disembark. In all, that probably took half an hour, but it felt like the longest part of our travels so far. We're on the ground, we don't have H1N1, let me out!

At the airport, we used the ATM and the internet - I had forgotten to print out the combination to the lock on the mailbox holding Mina's housekey, where we were staying... hehe - and got our express train/subway card combo tickets. It was pretty easy to get out of the airport, once we figured out where to buy the tickets, and suddenly we were on a comfortable train speeding toward Tokyo.

Arriving at Shinjuku subway station, we transferred to another subway line, traveled three stops to Shibuya, transferred to another train for three stops, then dazedly attempted to find Mina's apartment building. (Mina is a friend from high school who has been living in Japan for several years. I had bothered her on facebook for advice about our trip, and she offered to let us stay at her place - even though we hadn't seen each other since 1996. So incredibly generous! Coincidentally, she was out of town on her own holiday, so we got her place all to ourselves. Luckily, we did get to meet up with her on the last night of our trip - more on that later!)

After dropping our bags at her place and taking a few minutes to sit and take it all in, we wanted to press on and fight off the urge to sleep off our 25-hour travel odyssey. We didn't want to go very far, for fear of having to try to interpret this in our tired and disoriented state, so we just took the subway back to Shibuya and decided to walk around and find something to eat.

Coming out of the subway station, we were immediately assaulted with sounds, lights and people. The intersection right outside of the station is a common image of Tokyo in the media (e.g., it was shown in "Lost in Translation") and it was every bit as mad and chaotic as it is portrayed. We just stood at the corner for a few minutes, mouths agape, taking it all in. Am I really here?? I felt like I was scuba diving underwater, with schools of fish deftly swimming past me and voices from people on the street and from the huge TV screens above unintelligibly blurring together. It was the epitome of sensory overload.

This picture doesn't really do it justice - I'm too short, and should have held the camera higher! There are about 100 feet between us and the building straight ahead, and the intersection was FILLED with people.

Only slightly daunted, we picked a direction and threw ourselves into the thronging crowd, which moved surprisingly easily in every direction. The ultimate mission was to find food, and to that end we wandered in and out of food halls (in the basement storey of every department store, where tons of counters sell every kind of edible - more on that later) and looked at the plastic food display models in front of dozens of restaurants. Unusual for us when it comes to food, we were plagued by indecision. Finally, after wandering up and down several blocks, we found an izakaya (a Japanese pub, basically, but with more emphasis on food) that had been recommended in our Rough Guide book. The staff spoke very little English but had an English menu, from which we ordered a beef stew, chicken wings (for which they are known), and chicken gizzards. Not a bad start to our eating adventures!

Mmmmm... deep fried gizzards!

After that we walked around a bit more but were pretty tired, so we made our way back to Mina's and fell into a very satisfied sleep.

Celebrating the Dirty Dozen

A year ago today, we had the most awesome day of our lives. It is so hard to believe that a whole 12 17ths have passed since then! It has been a good year, capped off with our travels in Japan.

Happy one-year anniversary, my dear!

Ah, memories... (photo by Jen)

P.S. Yes, we are back in Chicago, returning to real life. Many pics and posts about Japan to come your way shortly. I am just finishing up my personal journalling and then we'll get on with it!

Random Japan Pictures

As promised, a photo of our sushi breakfast as Tsukiji fish market. We each had a combo plate, containing outstanding botan-ebi (spot prawn) and uni (sea urchin) amongst other things. The anago (second from the left on the bottom row) was a first for both of us: salt-water eel (as opposed to unagi, which is fresh water eel) with sprinkling of pink salt. Everything was so good, we chose to order a few additional pieces: toro (fatty salmon), oh toro (the fattiest tuna), and hotate (scallop) were all as great as you would expect. We also noticed something on the menu we've never seen, so we had to order it: kujira (whale).



It was...interesting, worth trying, but not something I would order again. The texture was not as pleasant as other sushi fish (a bit more like meat than fish), and there wasn't much flavor. After breakfast, we explored deeper into the market, where there were literally hundreds of stalls selling all manner of seafood. Definitely an exciting experience.

We're already nearing 1000 pictures, so here's a couple interesting ones to tide you over until we have time to write more:

Virtually every department store in Japan seems to have an enormous "food hall", typically covering the entire basement. In addition to groceries, there are dozens of stalls selling almost any kind of food you can think of. By far the most impressive we've seen was at Isetan in the Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo. I guessed that they had at least 1000 employees covering the assorted stalls. One meat counter seemed to specialize in what I assume was Kobe beef. 12,600 yen/100 g works out to about $570 USD/lb.



After four full days in Tokyo, we spent three days in Kyoto and Nara, which provided an extreme change of pace, especially since we focused on the older areas heaviest in shrines and traditional gardens. At Fushimi Inari, there is a literal avenue of torii, the red gates shown below. They say that there are over 20,000 gates. We took their word for it.



Finally, here's a picture of Michelle standing in front of a 15 m buddha statue at the Todai-Ji temple in Nara. They say that when they clean the statue, you can see up to 5 monks just standing in his hand.

Is That Alton Brown?

Our stolen wireless connection is a bit spotty, so we're going to start with uploading just this one picture. Make no mistake, our first two full days in Tokyo have been amazing, but one thing has made Michelle giggle like a schoolgirl, so let's start here.

This morning we visited the Tsukiji central wholesale market, where they have the famous tuna auctions at 5 AM. We were not able to get up that early (and we had conflicting information as to whether or not we would even be allowed to watch the auctions), but we did arrive around 8 AM. The level of activity was off the charts, and there were long lines for all the sushi stalls. At one point, we saw a parade of Americans (ie, "white people"), which we assumed was a tour group. But towards the back of the group was someone that looked pretty familiar. I wasn't sure, so I pointed him out to Michelle, and sure enough, it was Alton Brown (host of Food Network's "Good Eats" and "Iron Chef America").

So we stalked him. And got a picture.



He was actually very nice ("Hi, I'm Alton, I'm from Atlanta"). Apparently, they're filming a special in Tokyo, but we're not supposed to say anything about it. (We really don't know anything.)

We did wait in line, and had some great sushi for breakfast. Stay tuned for more pictures...

Seven ELEVENs sure are popular here in Tokyo...

OOPS! I forgot to post this (bad me! I guess I have the excuse that I was out of town...)

Happy belated Eleventh 17th, hubby of mine!